Rage Against the Dying of the Light
by HarmonyMarguerite
Summary: Holmes has five years left to live. He's seemingly okay with it, but it's eating Watson up inside. He treats every day like it's their last, even though there are still a few years left for them. Warnings: Future Character Death. Holmes/Watson slash.


**Title:** Rage Against the Dying of the Light

**Author:** HarmonyMarguerite

**Fandom:** Sherlock Holmes

**Pairing:** Holmes/Watson

**Rating:** PG, PG-13?

**Summary:** Another prompt based one, this one for **shkinkmeme**. Anon said: _"Holmes has five years left to live. He's seemingly okay with it, but it's eating Watson up inside. He treats every day like it's their last, even though there are still a few years left for them."_

**Notes:** Yet again, my love affair with the comma rears its ugly head. Hope this is something close to what you were hoping for, OP! (Also, you didn't specifically say you wanted Holmes/Watson, so I hope you don't mind too terribly that it made its way in here.

Sef-beta'd, so there are most likely mistakes, sorry. When I hook up with a beta, all of these will be edited for better reading. Title is from Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle in That Good Night."

GRAB A HANKY!

* * *

Time was a curious thing, Watson thought. Most hardly marked its passage in the long run, only noting it when there were meetings to get to, an anniversary that was forgotten, or even marking another year around the sun. Before you realized, you were old and grey and finding out that time had passed you by so quickly, you didn't know where it had gotten too.

And then, there were those, for whom time was simply just running out. They could see the end before them, a shadow looming over, ever present. You could rant, cry and scream about fairness and a just supreme being, but it didn't change anything. The end was still there, beckoning, and God, some people welcomed it. They could meet it with a smile, _and it was breaking his heart._

There was only so much time left, and it was running out far too quickly for Watson's comfort.

Holmes didn't seem to notice. He carried on as he always had, running through the streets of London after the worst sorts of criminals, trips to the boxing ring, a love affair with his needle, and a thousand and one things he did that could make that deadline come that much sooner.

"Why?" Watson had asked him once. "What is there to be gained by possibly throwing your life away on trivialities, when you could enjoy your last few years somewhere quiet and peaceful?" _With me_, but he didn't want to say that aloud.

"This is my legacy." Holmes answered quietly. "This is how I have always wanted to live, and this is what I love. Why can't I enjoy what time I have left the way that I want?"

It was the only time Holmes spoke of it.

Why indeed? So Watson was forced to fall silent, simply mark away the time on a mental calendar. _Five years, give or take a few months. Four years, give or take a few months. Three years, give or take-_

_God, if there is any justice in this world, you will give him just a few months more._

Holmes tended to smile more these days. It was his one concession, it seemed. He enjoyed the simple things more, waxing soliloquies on roses and rain, using his violin like a paintbrush and coloring stories out of lighthearted music. Mrs. Hudson could be found more often than not, sharing an evening with her lodgers, listening to Holmes talk about this case or that, or play for hours on the violin. If she walked away with tears in her eyes sometimes, no one bothered to speak of it. Even Lestrade would come around sometimes, often leaving early with a slight difficulty in forcing words past his throat. They didn't speak of that either. When it became routine for four or five street urchins to occupy the sitting room at all hours of the day, no one dared to move them, or speak of why they had become a permanent fixture.

They didn't speak of a lot of things. Mostly, they didn't speak of the end sentence Watson was forced to diagnose Holmes with. They didn't speak of the clock ticking down the years, months, hours, precious _seconds_, he had left in the world. They didn't speak of guilt.

He was a _doctor_. Shouldn't he be able to cure his best friend? His lover?

There were times, in the beginning, where Watson couldn't sit in that room, with the fire glowing merrily behind the grate and Holmes grinning in his armchair, waxing on about the case he had solved and how notable it had been for the deductive reasoning in a particular are. He would flee out into the night, leaving Holmes behind, open-mouthed, often mid-sentence, and simply run until his leg gave out and he would collapse, panting for breath in the cold night air.

He would often run to the same place, and fall outside of a certain building staring up into the unlit room of a laboratory. Holmes would always find him then, and if there was any mercy, it would be raining so they didn't have to speak of the tears staining Watson's cheeks.

Now, when that same urge compelled him, it drove him to the floor, crawling to wherever Holmes was sitting that day. It would drive him to wrap his arms around Holmes' torso, burying his face in Holmes' stomach, shoulder, neck, any place he could reach. Holmes would run his fingers through his hair, murmuring nonsense that in another life might have made him feel better.

Ninety out of a hundred people who walked through his door, Watson could cure. A simple bandage, a quick dose of medicine, a new therapy to try out, they walked out happy. Ten of those hundred, he could do almost nothing for, and when they left, he felt sorry, pausing for a moment and wonder at the fleetingness of life.

When Sherlock Holmes became one of those ten, it broke Watson into hundreds of pieces and scattered him into the wind so far, he knew he could never be whole again. He would never be the same. He couldn't even revel in the time they had left without clutching at his heart and turning away for a moment to recover himself.

He found himself staring at Holmes, memorizing those beloved features with the fear that it would not take long for them to slip out of his mind. When Holmes spoke, his eyes fell close, so as to commit it's cadence into his ears. Notebooks were filled with the minutiae of daily life. Everything that drove him crazy, everything that he loved about this insane, maniacal, genius lover of his was transcribed and placed into safe-keeping.

He was afraid that he would forget. That one day he would speak to someone and say "I once had this roommate, very strange man, though I can't recall any stories at the moment, but I believe it was an interesting life for me at the time."

That Holmes would become no more than a wisp of memory, a lonely stone with a name, while Watson walked around and enjoyed the changing seasons, Mrs. Hudson's well-cooked meals, Lestrade's company, a good cigar, was abhorrent to him.

Yet, inevitable.

These days though, the days they still had, Watson would make certain they counted. If there was no case, he was free to wake up before Holmes, and memorize the body laying next to him, first with his eyes. Hands followed eyes, and lips followed hands, worshiping at an alter that could be gone tomorrow, that one tomorrow, _would_ be gone.

They ate breakfast next to each other, not on opposite sides of the table. Holmes would laugh at him, every time he sat down, but Watson often felt that there was an invisible tether between them. Should he stray too far, that tether would snap, and he would never find Holmes again. Thus, at all hours of the day, he could be found next to Holmes, sitting at his feet, resting his forehead in Holmes' palm and praying for just a little more _time_.

Every opera that Holmes showed the slightest interest in, they went to, every musician that passed through, every concert they could possibly see, they were there. They went on long afternoon walks when the weather was nice, and Watson, never a religious man, would pray every morning for just an hour of sunshine. They alternated dinner out at different places, and dinner in, Mrs. Hudson plying Holmes' even more precarious appetite with his tried favorites, and new delicacies. Art museums, exhibits, anything they could possibly do in their free time, Watson ensured that they did. Everything that they had planned to do for years to come now had a deadline, and there he was determined that Holmes would not leave this world wanting.

There would be no regrets.

Every night, Watson would push Holmes down into the bed, covering him with his body, bringing them as close to one being as an earthly body would allow. They would love, fast and rough or slow and gently, it didn't matter what mood they were in, there would be bruises, bite marks, and scratches and it would be perfection of a sort. There was never anything holy or sacred at night, just pure, physical devotion.

Sometimes after they would speak, for the dark was easier to hide things in.

Watson had once asked Holmes if he was truly as fine as he was acting. Was he afraid of what came next?

"It is easier for me." Holmes replied. "I shall have a new adventure, of sorts. It is not I who will live with the memories, only you. I am not afraid for myself, Watson, I'm not afraid of what comes next for me. I am afraid, madly afraid, of what shall happen to you when I am gone."

"Nothing shall happen to me."

"That is what I'm afraid of."

There is nothing Watson can say to that, he can only press his lips to Holmes', and beg forgiveness for his own inadequacies and weakness.

And when he can begin to mark a change, when the weight drops off a lean body that can't afford a lost ounce, when the skin becomes paler and later ashen, when the body becomes too weak to lift out of bed, and a spirit burns through familiar eyes because a mortal body can no longer hold it…

There will be nothing more he can do, than to hold a hand, and beg for just a little more _time._

End


End file.
